Exterior work and ceiling update

Sorry to be away so long but it has been a crazy couple of weeks.  I feel like I should be remodeling my car since that is where I am spending most of my time these days.  I have had the normal overcommitments with volunteering for activities associated with the kids.  But on top of that, I have had to be at the hill country house as much as possible because we have contractors working on the exterior.  There is a crew working on adding a partially covered deck and another crew installing new cement board siding and replacing rotted wood.  When these crews are done next week, the exterior will be close to where we want it to be.  That will only leave all the interior work on my long list of to-do items.  In the meantime, I spend over an hour in the car driving to and from the house, as well as trips to Home Depot, etc.

 

 Here are some before pictures of the exterior:

 

 

And, not quite after, but so far:

 

 

 



 

 

Did you notice the new addition in that last picture?  That guy has adopted us while we are working at the house this week.  He must live in the area and comes whenever he hears the construction sounds.  He's very friendly, especially to our female dog who was visiting this past weekend.  So friendly, we had to pull him off of her before he broke her 16 year old back legs :-)  But I digress.

 

 

Since I have been out at the house most days for at least a few hours, I have made some progress on my ceiling project.  I installed all of the wood I could using my 3-step ladder.  (I have shunned the larger ladder since it stranded me in the attic lookout.)  Here is what it looked like this morning:

But now I have a new toy!  I bought a small scaffold from Harbor Freight tools.  I knew I would need some kind of scaffolding to be able to complete the job and to replace the ceiling fan.  The dilemma, as always, is whether to rent or buy.  I could have rented a pretty large scaffold set for $15 - $30 per day.  In addition to the issue of needing the equipment for many days, the main consideration was how to transport the thing.  By the time I rented the equipment and a trailer to transport it, I could buy my own.  I have plenty of storage at this house, so there was no reason not to buy.  Hopefully I will find a use for this new toy again after this ceiling project.  So here is a picture of the scaffold:

I can raise or lower the board depending on the height I need.  I love it! I now wish that I had bought this before I started.  I was able to work on two areas at once.  So after an hour I had this much done:

Since I have finished putting polyurethane on all the boards, all I have to do is cut and nail.  At the rate the scaffold lets me work, I should be able to finish this ceiling in two more sessions of working.  That should be the same timeframe as the exterior project. 

So now that nothing is requiring me to be at the hill country house every day you might think I would take a break and oh, say, take care of my real house (which looks like college students live here).  But you would be wrong!  I just heard today that my flooring should be delivered as early as Monday.  So once I finish the ceiling, I can move directly to the floors.  Yea!

I'll update with the final pictures of the exterior and ceiling soon and let you know how I am proceedings with installing the hardwoods.  That's it for now.

 

e-mail updates

I am still figuring out this blog thing.  I have been asked by several readers to install the ability to receive an e-mail alert for new posts.  While I like the idea of inflating my blog hits with folks coming to check for new posts, I guess it is more convenient for the reader to only come when there is a new one.  So, I think I have added that ability on the right side.  You enter your e-mail address and hit submit.  You should get a message that makes you type in a word to make sure you aren't a robot. (Those raise my stress level since I can never completely read them and end up having to guess).  Then you will receive an e-mail asking you to confirm.  This is my test post to see if it works.  Thanks for reading!

Attics and ceilings...

Do you remember the wall I stripped the sheetrock from?  It is coming down so we can expand our smallest bedroom into a neighboring closet to create a large master bedroom.  So, before I took the sawzall to the studs, I thought I would check to make sure it wasn't a load bearing wall.  The best way I know to do that is to crawl up in the attic to see if any of the roofing or ceiling supports end right above the wall.  Since the weather has turned cool, this task isn't as bad as it could be in the summer.  If you haven't been up in your attic, I would recommend that you get up there and take a look around.  You will learn a lot about your house.

Our attic access is through the garage ceiling.  We don't have one of those attic stair sets but I wish we did.  So I brought our lightweight aluminum ladder from home and propped it under the access panel.  I popped my head up and looked around.  I was pleasantly surprised that the attic was spacious, even above the areas with raised ceilings.  We were predicting problems when we needed to move air ducts and add plumbing vents, but now I am not worried about that at all.  Let me get up there and see it close up....

Aaaaaa!  The ladder just collapsed underneath me and is now laying flat on the garage floor.  I have dropped down but caught myself on the sides of the attic access.  As I was hanging there, I was wondering how this was going to turn out.  I knew I had a contractor coming to give me a bid on the deck but that was in 30 minutes.  I couldn't hang on that long.  I threw off my flashlight to get a better grip of the wooden beams under my arms.  I can see that if I drop down I will land on the ladder and I really don't want to do that because I have a bad ankle from a previous rollerskating injury.  So while my arms are beginning to scream from muscle pain and wood scrapes, I was able to lower myself down to where I am hanging by my hands and can swing myself to the side to miss the ladder.  Here is the aftermath under one arm:

 After spewing every curse word I could think of and walking off my shock, I was able to figure out the problem with the ladder (slick garage floor + crappy old ladder = @$#^%&$%&).  I braced the ladder feet and went back up.  I know, what is the matter with me.  I walked around a little, careful to only step on the ceiling joists.  The attic could use a little more insulation in some spots.  I could even see room light coming in through the pot lights which means that the freezing air will enter during the winter and the air conditioning will escape in the summer.  I made my way over to the wall I wanted to remove and to my surprise, there are roofing supports that rest on that wall. Good thing I didn't just knock down the wall.

 

So, looks like we will need to add some kind of header where this wall is.  I'll start looking for a contractor for that soon.  For now that project is on hold.  On to the next - I will be working on the ceiling in the den.  There is popcorn between the cedar beams on the cathedral ceiling in the den.  Our plan is to cover that up with some type of wood.  I bought a pack each of pine and cedar 1/4 inch thick ceiling planks.  I did some samples of several stains as well as clear finish and I tacked them up to see what they looked like:

 

 

 

I like the cedar better than the pine (which you can barely see in one of the pictures).  I prefer it, not only for appearance, but also the cedar seemed to be easier to work with and better quality.  You cannot tell in the picture and it is barely noticeable in person, but the cedar is stained different colors.  I figure why go to the trouble of staining if you can barely tell. 

 

But the best part is that I got a really good deal on five boxes of the cedar today.  I will still need 24 boxes, but since they only had open boxes at Lowes and several pieces were damaged, the manager gave me 1/2 off.  I think I can work around most of the damaged areas so this saved me $50 today.  I am hoping I can get similar bargains around town at other Lowes since they are discontinuing this product.  I am such a sucker for a bargain!  Here is my work station where I am coating each board with polyurethane.  I think I will do two coats.

 

 

I will update with pictures once I start getting the pieces cut and nailed to the ceiling.  That's all for now!